Vermont Trip: Introduction into Spartan Racing
It all began with a thought, “What the hell am I going to do, fitness wise, for the rest of my life?”
A loaded question sure, but I was curious and interested the answer it to the best of my ability. Up to this point, all I had ever known was training for sports. That usually involved some form of strength and conditioning workout, but after college, I was somewhat over that type of training. I had just come off of four years of high school, and five years of college where I had normally worked out 4 to 5 times a week with a large amount of intensity.
I had seen quite a few people who were former athletes naturally merge into either CrossFit or running a half marathon. Both of those options did not seem appealing at the time. Then, one day, for some strange reason, I came across Spartan racing. Now to provide context, I had no idea what this was, but I knew one thing – this looked pretty damn awesome! So, here is the process I took:
Step One: See if I had any friends crazy enough to do this with me.
Step Two: Try to get a group of good guys to head on a one time trip somewhere to compete in one of these races.
As me and the boys were on a zoom call, we had to figure out where we would actually do this thing. There were many places to choose, however, none of them were in the Midwest. “No worries,” I thought “I’m always down for a cool trip”, but ultimately we ended up choosing the state of Vermont. In true Nick fashion, we end up choosing one that is halfway across the country, and in an area that I have never been before.
Long story short, we booked a trip. Now came a major decision, do we drive or do we fly? Most sane people would’ve chose flying, however, we were feeling ambitious so we chose to drive.
Just a couple of great friends, driving 17 hours to Vermont from Iowa what could go wrong? Fast forward to the day we left, unfortunately, only two guys had remained, myself and my buddy, Ryan.
My buddy Ryan was coming from Arizona so he had to fly to Iowa to meet up with me. (It is hard to back out on a guy willing to fly to you and commit to a very long car ride to run this race LOL.) When he departed from Arizona, I knew there was no turning back. When he arrived in Iowa, we hopped in the rental vehicle and took off at 10 PM CST. ( Nearly 18 hours to go)!
Bless Ryan’s heart, for he drove the majority of the 17 hour drive that we had embarked on. I do have to say, I made a pretty great passenger princess!
As we drove through the night and into the next morning, we were gaining quite a bit of fatigue from the long trip. We had to keep marching to make sure that the 17 hour trip did not turn into a 20 hour trip due to a stopping too much. One specific location caught our eye. That location, so happens to be Niagara Falls. We could not have asked for a cooler break in the action traveling from Iowa to Vermont. (Niagara Falls is on the boarder of the State of New York and Canada for those that are curious.)
As we explored the park surrounding the Falls, we were able to invest a small sum into a tour that allowed you to get underneath the Falls. This absolutely did not disappoint!!
Needless to say, this was an AMAZING experience and I would highly recommend people going to check out the Falls if you get a chance. For the record, this also made for a great shower and some natural energy after traveling all night.
After Niagara falls, we still had quite a while before we hit Vermont. One of the most unanticipated elements of this trip was seeing the state of New York. It truly reminded us of northern Wisconsin and Minnesota, and it was a beautiful landscape as we drove through to get to Vermont. (Similarly to Illinois, most of the state is rural land with a massive major city aka New York city, aka Chicago).
After what felt like a whole day, we finally arrived at our Airbnb in Vermont, and it was time to settle in.
On this trip, we planned for an extra day to go explore, because when you’re in a new part of the country that you’ve never been before, you have to take a little bit of time to check out some cool places. One of those cool places was actually Fort Ticonderoga.
Ryan and I are both history buffs so this Fort was a must see. For those history buffs out there, Fort Ticonderoga was constructed by a French Canadian military engineer who leveraged it during the Seven Years’ war in 1755. It also was a major strategic Fort used during the Revolutionary War.
(If you can imagine this, I took this photo where military personnel stood as a watch out for the enemy. If they needed to, they would be prepare to blast their 100’s of cannons into the bay to destroy enemy ships. CRAZY)!
The next video is of the same place we were standing, but it provides a better angle of how many cannons they had prepared for battle/defense.
Talk about a blast from the past! (Pun certainly intended).
Once we returned to our Airbnb that night, it was early to bed. The next morning was race day, baby!
In terms of training for this 5K, I ran leisurely for about three weeks working up in distance to 3.2 miles. This amount of training served me quite poorly LOL. My endurance was not near to what I discovered I needed, but there’s more on that in my Vlog - (Insert: How to properly train for a Spartan 5K.)
When we arrived at the race, I was blown away by the Spartan setup. This was no small walk in the park – they meant business! Athletes all over the world come to these events and it was so cool to compete along side them, especially our friend we made from Australia who finished way before we did. The photo below is Ryan and I pre race registered and ready to go! (You can tell we we’re ambitious).
The energy was strong in this event! Check out the start and end locations for all the racers!
As the starting gun fired, we took off. We tried to pace ourselves accordingly, but I had no idea the task that lay ahead. In Vermont, the course is actually much longer than a 5K due to Vermont being the HQ for Spartan. (Talk about a blow below the belt). There I was, mid race, only trained up for a 5K and our race turned into nearly a 10K. However, in moments like this you have to decide what the hell you are made of. Ryan and I leveraged each other to continue to push forward, even when we were spent. We did end up taking a handful of water breaks throughout the race to refuel.
All in all, we finished the race! It was one of the hardest, yet most rewarding things I have ever done. I knew as I finished that this was the start of something fucking awesome!
Below is a picture of us after we finished. (We don’t look as ambitious LOL).
We did end up taking off later that Sunday evening due to the amount of drive time we had in front of us and I picked up my portion of driving this time around as Ryan drove nearly 80% of the way there. We were certainly very tired, but this trip was one to remember for a lifetime AND it spurred an inspiration for us to continue down our Spartan path.
If you are interested in Spartan Racing, I would highly recommend you do it! If you click the link below, I have videos on my YouTube channel that show you how to train for both a 5K and a 10K which was where we had our sight on next!
(Insert YouTube videos)